Currently, Brazilian women can only obtain legal abortions in cases of rape, life-threatening pregnancy or a fatal brain defect in the fetus. The constitutional amendment, known as PEC 181, was originally intended to extend maternity leave for mothers of premature newborns.

Of course, Afro-Brazilians do not need to escape slavery anymore, but in a country riven by racial inequality and historic injustices, the quilombos now serve as focal points for resistance of a more contemporary kind.

Brazil’s academic research community overwhelmingly predicts new measures will lead to more violence in Brazil — a country with around 43,000 gun deaths per year. But in the Bolsonaro era, their arguments are losing to a political bloc that is resolutely opposed to empirical research and that takes many of its cues from pro-gun campaigners in the United States.

Marielle Franco was Brazil's most prominent advocate and defender of human rights. A year after Franco was shot dead, her followers continue to mourn and demand answers from the government as to the murky circumstances of her murder.

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